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Bright Indirect Light For Plants Explained. What Is Bright Indirect Light For Houseplants?
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Apr 27, 2022
What does bright indirect light for house plants exactly mean. We always here place your house plants in bright indirect light. This gardening Canada video is going to look at exactly what bright indirect light for indoor plants means. We’ll go over examples of bright indirect light and white placing your plants directly in front of a window is bright indirect light. Will be going into the science of this and even some hacks that you can use if you don’t have availability to bright indirect light. Remember if you ever want rapid growth for your house plants during the winter months you should supplement your lighting. #houseplants #brightindirectlight #indoorplants 🌿Join our monthly newsletter! newsletter.gardeningincanada.net Website/Blog & FREE printables: https://gardeningincanada.net —————— 👩🔬 Grab your at home Garden Soil Testing Workbook! https://etsy.me/3dW5HLg ————— 👩🔬Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/gardeningincanada —————
View Video Transcript
0:00
Hello plant people, how are you guys doing today? If you're new around here, my name is Ashley and
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I'm a soil scientist. On this channel I like to take that science and apply to all things plants
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and in today's video we're talking about probably the worst plant advice or the probably the most
0:15
irritating plant advice every plant person gives you and that is make sure you place your plants in
0:22
bright indirect light. The reason why that is irritating is because it is so inaccurate when
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it comes to indoor plants it's not even funny so let's get into why that may be
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especially if you are in the northern hemisphere where we are starting to get
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shorter and shorter days let's apply that science to these concepts and look
0:44
at exactly what bright indirect light means bright indirect light is characterized as bright light that is diffused so diffusion is just the
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process of a tree a house a shed a vehicle anything that diffuses the
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intensity of bright UVA and UVB light meaning your windows diffuse light I
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said it I'm sorry it's the truth you can further diffuse that light with a sheer
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curtain but your windows in winter will heavily diffuse UVA and UVB light
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meaning your house plants for the most part should be placed directly in the
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light especially in the Northern Amherst here that's probably going to upset quite a few people but it honestly it's the truth so if you want really
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rapid growth from your plants without the use of grow lights bright direct
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light is what everything should say bright indirect light would be for
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outdoors when they say bright indirect light the on house plant sticker
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they're talking about if you had this outside if you had this in a greenhouse
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If you had it in a place where the Sun is able to come straight through and it not double pane glass If you have a normal house window not a greenhouse window but a house window bright indirect light is literally full sun in front of your window and that exactly what i do
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for all my house plants i okay so this is future ashley editing ashley that just woke up kind of
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like from bed anyways this here is another method that i love to use and i find very effective
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especially when it comes to intensifying the light and it is placing a mirror in
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front of a plant that is next to a window so if you want really rapid growth
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like as you can see this and Sonia he's very very happy plants but it's because
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he's in front of a mirror so the light is coming in through the window here it's hitting the plant whatever misses the plant refracts off the mirror and
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back at the plant now of course the light coming off the mirror is going to
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diffused and we'll talk about this a little later on the video but it still adds a little bit of
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intensity and therefore helps a little bit with photosynthesis and i do do this all over the house
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especially with my cacti and my succulents so i will definitely place a mirror in the area
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so let's get into the science of why that is windows in your home according to the government
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website are able to filter out uvb rays but not uva rays so that means we can then look at what
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uvb does and what uva does to plants so just from a human um perspective the fact that it filters out
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uvb rays means that you don't get your vitamin d intake when you're sitting in front of a window
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you have to physically be outside to get your vitamin d intake so just keep that in mind from
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a human perspective but from a plant perspective we have to look how at how uvb affects the process
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of photosynthesis so uvb light really isn't that important when it comes to photosynthesis it is
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the uva that is uvb for a house plant perspective has really one main concern that we're missing
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but from a plant like if we're trying to grow tomatoes lettuce basil that's a huge implication
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And that big implication is that the lack of UVB can actually cause an underdevelopment
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of the flavonoids within the actual plant material So obviously it doesn affect houseplant people but it could affect herb garden people which is generally why herbs
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don't taste or they don't smell as good when they're just planted in a windowsill
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rather than in an actual LED lighting system but where UVB is important to the
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house plant side is that UVB light can trigger hormones within your plant or
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normal enzymatic processes within your plant to cause almost a sunscreen coating
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so when we have our houseplants indoors and we're continually exposing them to
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just window light diffused bright indirect which is actually direct light from the window we don't develop our sunscreen on the outside of our leaves
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meaning when we go to bring our plants outdoors or in the summertime when we go
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open our windows up the light can come in and it can actually cause burning on
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the leaves because we have completely depleted our UVB because we have
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completely depleted our natural sunscreen this also means when we get closer into the summer we may want to move our house plants farther away from
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the window or put a sheer curtain up because as the light intensifies is more
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and more UVB light is going to make its way through the window UVA light is going to make
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its way through the window and because we haven't built up our sunscreen on the leaves we end up with
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burning this is why when I did the video on transferring houseplants from indoors to outside
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I heavily heavily heavily stressed properly hardening your plants off because when you have
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them inside and you go to bring them outdoors if you don't have the sunblock
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built up your plants will fry and they will fry quickly this is also why when
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we get plants from the garden center that have been inside of a greenhouse
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especially again in the northern hemisphere if you have a greenhouse that's running you know 24 7 365 throughout the winter they probably have
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some pretty heavy-duty double pane windows and so the plants grow just fine
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because they got lots of UVA they may even have supplemental lighting in a lot of cases in these greenhouses but the UVB is not getting to that plant and therefore it never building up the sunscreen so when you go to bring them home you put them
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outside and they burn it again has to do with the lack of sunscreen so there you have it the truth
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bright indirect light is truly bright direct light from your windows outside especially when it comes
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through the winter time. So if you want to diffuse that just a little more, a sheer curtain will be
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the nuff. But try to get your plants as close to the window as possible if you do not have grow
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lights, if you're looking for proper healthy growth and you're trying to limit legginess. I very rarely
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plant any or place any of my plants away from a window. I know it looks like these guys are really
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far from a window. They're not. I'm literally sitting directly in front of a window right now
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So they are very very close to a window plus they do have grow lights supplemental light
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Now if these didn't have the supplemental light they would be on that windowsill or as close as
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Possible the thing is is when you get closer to the springtime or the summer you start opening up windows
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You may want to move things back I have burnt plants in the past because I've absolutely
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forgotten and so I've cranked open my window and the light has come in and has burnt my plants
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It doesn't take much when that sunblock has officially been depleted from our plant leaves
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So new advice. Be sure to share this with anyone you care about
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New advice from a scientist. Bright indirect light, it's cancelled. I'm cancelling it
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I'm cancel culturing bright indirect light statements. It is direct window light only going forward
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Oh, I'm sure people are not going to digest that well. So anyways, you guys have to let me know in the comments if this makes sense to you because
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I think it makes sense to a lot of people once they start actually putting their plants
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close to the window. They start realizing like, oh, my plant's finally growing again or it's finally drinking water again
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And it ultimately has a lot to do with the fact that you didn't have it in bright indirect
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light when you had it eight feet away from your front window. You actually had it in like shade would be equivalent of what you had it in
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Anyways, I want to thank you guys so much for watching. be sure to give this video a thumbs up, hit that subscribe button. I will talk to you guys next time
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Bye
#Biological Sciences